THE VICTOR AND THE VANQUISHED.
It is now forty-five years since the last act of the rebellion was
consummated, by the defeat of Duncombe's party in the London district,
the punishment of Sutherland's brigands at Windsor, and the destruction
of the steamer _Caroline_ and dispersal of the discreditable ruffians,
of whom their "president," Mackenzie, was heartily sick, at Navy Island.
None of these events came within my own observation, and I pass them by
without special remark.
But respecting Sir Francis Bond Head and his antagonist, I feel that
more should be said, in justice to both. It is eminently unfair to
censure Sir Francis for not doing that which he was not commissioned to
do. Even so thorough a Reformer and so just a man as Earl Russell, had
failed to see the advisability of extending "responsible government" to
any of Her Majesty's Colonies. Up to the time of Lord Durham's report in
1839, no such proposal had been even mooted; and it appears to have been
the general opinion of British statesmen, at the date of Sir Francis
Head's appointment, that to give a responsible ministry to Canada was
equivalent to offering her independence. In taking it for granted that
Canadians as a whole were unfit to have conferred on them the same
rights of self-government as were possessed by Englishmen, Irishmen and
Scotchmen in the old country, consisted the original error. This error,
however, Sir Francis shared with the Colonial Office and both Houses of
the Imperial Parliament. Since those days the mistake has been admitted,
and not Canada alone, but the Australian colonies and South Africa have
profited by our advancement in self-government.
As for Sir Francis's personal character, even Mackenzie's biographer
allows that he was frank, kindly and generous in an unusual degree. That
he won the entire esteem of so many men of whom all Canadians of
whatever party are proud--such men as Chief Justice Robinson, Bishop
Strachan, Chief Justices Macaulay, Draper and McLean, Sir Allan N.
McNab, Messrs. Henry Ruttan, Mahlon Burwell, Jno. W. Gamble and many
others, I hold to be indubitable proof of his high qualities and honest
intentions. Nobody can doubt that had he been sent here to carry out
responsible government, he would have done it zealously and honourably.
But he was sent to oppose it, and, in opposing it, he simply did his
duty.
A gentleman[9] well qualified to judge, and who knew him personally, has
favoured me with the following remarks apropos of the subject, which I
have pleasure in laying before my readers:
"As a boy, I had a sincere admiration for his [Sir Francis's]
devoted loyalty, and genuine English character; and I have since
learnt to respect and appreciate with greater discrimination his
great services to the Crown and Empire. He was a little Quixotic
perhaps. He had a marked individuality of his own. But he was as
true as steel, and most staunch to British law and British
principle in the trying days of his administration in Canada.
His loyalty was chivalrous and magnetic; by his enlightened
enthusiasm in a good cause he evoked a true spirit of loyalty in
Upper Canada, that had well-nigh become extinct, being overlaid
with the spirit of ultra-radicalism that had for years
previously got uppermost among our people. But Upper Canada
loyalty had a deep and solid foundation in the patriotism of the
U. E. Loyalists, a noble race who had proved by deeds, not
words, their attachment to the Crown and government of the
mother land. These U. E. Loyalists were the true founders of
Upper Canada; and they were forefathers of whom we may be justly
proud--themselves 'honouring the father and the mother'--their
sovereign and the institutions under which they were born--they
did literally obtain the promised reward of that 'first
commandment with promise,' viz.: length of days and honour."
* * * * *
William Lyon Mackenzie was principally remarkable for his indomitable
perseverance and unhesitating self-reliance. Of toleration for other
men's opinions, he seems to have had none. He did, or strove to do,
whatsoever he himself thought right, and those who differed with him he
denounced in the most unmeasured terms. For example, writing of the
Imperial Government in 1837, he says:
"Small cause have Highlanders and the descendants of Highlanders
to feel a friendship for the Guelphic family. If the Stuarts had
their faults, they never enforced loyalty in the glens and
valleys of the north by banishing and extirpating the people; it
was reserved for the Brunswickers to give, as a sequel to the
massacre of Glencoe, the cruel order for depopulation. I am
proud of my descent from a rebel race; who held borrowed
chieftains, a scrip nobility, rag money and national debt in
abomination. . . . Words cannot express my contempt at
witnessing the servile, crouching attitude of the country of my
choice. If the people felt as I feel, there is never a Grant or
Glenelg who crossed the Tay and Tweed to exchange high-born
Highland poverty for substantial Lowland wealth, who would dare
to insult Upper Canada with the official presence, as its ruler,
of such an equivocal character as this Mr. what do they call
him--Francis Bond Head."
Had Mackenzie confined himself to this kind of vituperation, all might
have gone well for him, and for his followers. People would only have
laughed at his vehemence. The advocacy of the principle of responsible
government in Canada would have been and was taken up by Orangemen, U.
E. Loyalists, and other known Tories. Ever since the day when the
manufacture of even a hob-nail in the American colonies was declared by
English statesmen to be intolerable, the struggle has gone on for
colonial equality as against imperial centralization. The final adoption
of the theory of ministerial responsibility by all political parties in
Canada, is Mackenzie's best justification.
But he sold himself in his disappointment to the republican tempter, and
justly paid the penalty. That he felt this himself long before he died,
will be incontestably shown by his own words, which I copy from Mr.
Lindsey's "Life of Mackenzie," vol. ii., page 290:
"After what I have seen here, I frankly confess to you that, had
I passed nine years in the United States before, instead of
after, the outbreak, I am very sure I would have been the last
man in America to be engaged in it."
And, again, page 291:
"A course of careful observations during the last eleven years
has fully satisfied me that, had the violent movements in which
I and many others were engaged on both sides of the Niagara
proved successful, that success would have deeply injured the
people of Canada, whom I then believed I was serving at great
risks; that it would have deprived millions, perhaps, of our own
countrymen in Europe of a home upon this continent, except upon
conditions which, though many hundreds of thousands of
immigrants have been constrained to accept them, are of an
exceedingly onerous and degrading character. . . . There is not
a living man on this continent who more sincerely desires that
British Government in Canada may long continue, and give a home
and a welcome to the old countryman, than myself."
Of Mackenzie's imprisonment and career in the United States, nothing
need be said here. I saw him once more in the Canadian Parliament after
his return from exile, in the year 1858. He was then remarkable for his
good humour, and for his personal independence of party. His chosen
associates were, as it seemed to me, chiefly on the Opposition or
Conservative side of the House.
Before closing this chapter, I cannot help referring to the unfortunate
men who suffered in various ways. They were farmers of the best class,
and of the most simple habits. The poor fellows who lay wounded by the
road side on Yonge Street, were not persons astute enough to discuss
political theories, but feeble creatures who could only shed bitter
tears over their bodily sufferings, and look helplessly for assistance
from their conquerors. There were among them boys of twelve or fifteen
years old, one of whom had been commissioned by his ignorant old mother
at St. Catharines, to be sure and bring her home a check-apron full of
tea from one of the Toronto groceries.
I thought at the time, and I think still, that the Government ought to
have interfered before matters came to a head, and so saved all these
hapless people from the cruel consequences of their leaders' folly. On
the other hand, it is asserted that neither Sir Francis nor his Council
could be brought to credit the probability of an armed rising. A friend
has told me that his father, who was then a member of the Executive
Council, attended a meeting as late as nine o'clock on the 4th December,
1837. That he returned home and retired to rest at eleven. In half an
hour a messenger from Government House came knocking violently at the
door, with the news of the rising; when he jumped out of bed exclaiming,
"I hope Robinson will believe me next time." The Chief Justice had
received with entire incredulity the information laid before the
Council, of the threatened movement that week.
[Footnote 9: The late lamented Dr. Alpheus Todd, librarian of the
Dominion Parliament.]